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Original poster

Your elopement stories please!

38 replies

JorisBonson · 04/08/2020 10:26

Our (small) wedding was moved from June to October, which is still looking iffy if we want to have even a small day with a meal or something after.

I had previously discussed elopement with my family who were not happy, at all 🙄.

It's now got to the point where we just want to be married and will deal with any fallout after.

Please let me have your lovely elopement stories and any tips or venues

OP posts:

SirVixofVixHall · 04/08/2020 10:31

Good friends got married without telling their families, registry office, then cakes at a tea room with the witnesses.
My friend’s mother properly eloped. Her husband-to-be put a ladder up against her window in the middle of the night, she climbed down and they drove to Gretna Green .

Original poster

JorisBonson · 04/08/2020 10:36

My friend’s mother properly eloped. Her husband-to-be put a ladder up against her window in the middle of the night, she climbed down and they drove to Gretna Green

I LOVE this.

Would love to go to Gretna but all my family are in Scotland so that would be double fall out

OP posts:

GoingToTryThisAgain947 · 04/08/2020 10:52

Well... I got married in Las Vegas, (that counts as elopement doesn't it?) a trip that was planned for my husband's birthday and we started thinking ... Why not? We had been together ten years and our families are just ridiculous. My family has ruined every single wedding we have every had! So much drama!

So we told no-one, booked a chapel and all in all it cost £600 for everything , chapel, dress, rings etc.(over and above the trip), the trip in all cost £6000 for ten days in Las Vegas. And it was amazing, it was actually a lovely little ceremony. And I've never regretted it. (Chapel of the flowers) Our wedding was online to view for a month afterwards I think ( you have to pay to see it, it's not just accessible to everyone). So everyone saw it after the fact lol. My family weren't happy but still joke I saved them a ton of money so they got over it.

It's not for everyone, but it was right for us.

BurtsBeesKnees · 04/08/2020 11:57

Me and my dh got married in a registry office, at a place that was special to us in the UK. It was on a Friday

Our witnesses were 2 people from the offices at the registrar office.

I got married in jeans, heels and a 'nice top'

Our wedding breakfast was fish and chips.
We then went into town and 2 4 1 cocktails in the local bar, and then had a lovely meal in a restaurant we both love.
Our wedding night was one night in a posh hotel.
I went back to work on the Monday.

Been married for 10 years now and still no one knows

Babypug · 04/08/2020 12:00

We got married in a registry office Friday first thing in the morning then jumped in a taxi and went off to the Maldives for 3 weeks straight after. It's not legally recognised if you get married there so we had a blessing on the beach. 2 wedding dresses couldn't have been more perfect!

SirVixofVixHall · 04/08/2020 12:12

As a teenager I used to gaze at friend’s then middle aged parents and try and imagine them as young elopers ! I am not sure how old her Mum was at the time, 19 or 20 I think. You had to be 21 then to get married without parental permission.

SirVixofVixHall · 04/08/2020 12:15

Another friend of mine got married last year , after over thirty years together. I was going to visit her Mum, and got an an anxious text ...” DON’T TELL HER WE ARE MARRIED AS SHE DOESN’T KNOW “ ...
They had just their children there, as wanted to avoid any fuss.

myfurloughedfriend · 04/08/2020 12:26

Another Vegas wedding here. We couldn't be doing with the circus of a 'proper' wedding so booked a holiday to the states and got married in the Elvis chapel - it was so bad it was good IYSWIM.

Limo from the hotel, wedding, flowers and pictures was about $200 (a long time ago!). We just told family it was spur of the moment, even though we planned it - to this day my Dad thinks DH is a legend for saving him a fortune 😆

Original poster

JorisBonson · 04/08/2020 12:30

@BurtsBeesKnees

Me and my dh got married in a registry office, at a place that was special to us in the UK. It was on a Friday

Our witnesses were 2 people from the offices at the registrar office.

I got married in jeans, heels and a 'nice top'

Been married for 10 years now and still no one knows

This all sounds perfect

OP posts:

Sallycinammonbangsthedruminthe · 04/08/2020 12:43

We eloped..well kind of! We told everybody we were getting married and where and when and that no one at all was invited! We were both on second weddings so wanted no fuss.We wanted it to be just us so thats what we did! It was amazing..2 witnesses and job done..afterwards we jumped into the car and went to the seaside for the weekend.I would not have changed a thing. 10 years on and we are doing just fine!

UseItUp · 04/08/2020 12:49

These are all lovely. :)

My family is ridiculous and I also see getting married as really intimate, so if we got married I would definitely consider eloping.

Thehorrorthehorror · 04/08/2020 12:56

Why on earth did you discuss your 'elopement' with your family, OP? By its very nature, elopement implies secrecy. Did you actively want them to protest, or to stop you?

We didn't 'elope', we simply didn't tell anyone other than our two witnesses that we were getting married. I wore an old corduroy coat and boots, and DH wore a Pixies tshirt, and we went for tapas afterwards with our witnesses. There was no 'fallout'. I think it was a couple of years later that word got out, and by then it was considerably too late for even the most wedding-obsessed relative to complain about 'not getting a day out'. Not that we would have taken a blind bit of notice either way.

BiBabbles · 04/08/2020 13:14

My advice for venues is having them close together and wearing comfortable shoes Literally the only thing I'd have spent more on is getting new comfy shoes rather than sticking out with my 'nice' pair. I also would have spent on a photographer but one of our witnesses offered to do so for us as her present.

We eloped in our local registry office - me in a blue dress, him in a navy shirt and slacks, took our three witnesses (friends from my spouse's uni course) out to a lovely restaurant. Afterwards, we went to art place that showed foreign films and we watched Spirited Away then went home for cake. Now on our anniversary, we watch that movie again and eat cake with our kids.

Having grown up in a community that does big weddings with a lot of family pressure and drama, it was the most relaxing wedding ever and, other than the shoes, I have no regrets.

Babdoc · 04/08/2020 13:23

I got the day off work, wore an old black dress from a cheap high st chain store, and DH and I married with just two witnesses at our local registry office. No ring, flowers, photos, reception, guests or honeymoon.
I went back to work the next morning for a 56 continuous shift as a junior hospital doctor.
Neither of us wanted to marry (feminist and hippy) but we needed the tax rebate to replace our car! We hid the marriage certificate and pretended it never happened.

Thehorrorthehorror · 04/08/2020 13:32

Ditto, @Babdoc, apart from the medical job. In fact, I didn't actually take the day off work, we both went to work in the morning as our registry office slot was a lunchtime one. To this day, my SIL finds it absolutely horrifying that neither of us knows when our wedding anniversary is.

Cherrybakewellll · 04/08/2020 13:40

We didn't full on elope but we just asked our parents to a nice local hotel for lunch/afternoon tea. We told them a few days before that it was Infact our wedding. Which was handy cos my parents took the kids home with them and we stayed there for 2 more days having spa and amazing food

I have always been of the mind, if you want to be married you don't need a wedding. Honestly if it wasn't for our kids (knowing they would want to be part of the ceremony) we would have just booked the local registry office, gone ourselves, grabbed a couple of witnesses and job done.

BluebellsGreenbells · 04/08/2020 13:46

We eloped. Gretna green.

We had considered Vagas a year before but fell pregnant so couldn’t fly.

We didn’t tell anyone and had a nice lunch in Gretna hotel afterwards.

We paid for flowers to be delivered and a photographer.

I wore a long summer dress, it was a nice day, the sun shone.

TiddyTid · 04/08/2020 13:57

We eloped and only parents and my brother knew. It was an amazing day - we eloped to Devon. Had the dress, kilt for DH, cake, flowers, photographer etc etc and DDog was best man.

It was so stress free and we thoroughly indulged ourselves on our day. I highly recommend it!!

Tinyhumansurvivalist · 04/08/2020 14:00

some friends of mine did similar as above, local registry office and 2 friends and their child. It took about 4 years for their parents etc to find out.

My dp wants us to elope, he hasn't actually proposed but he has no family, dad absconded when he was a toddler, mum died of cancer 15 years ago and he believes his older half brother is dead..pi couldn't find him when their mum was dying. In contrast I have a huge family and friendship group. The disparity makes him uncomfortable but he also doesn't like fuss, believes it should just be about the two of us.

I agree to a point and dreamily Google elopement packages (he wants to go to hawaii but I don't like the idea) but I can't bear the fall out from my mum!!!

Mum4Fergus · 04/08/2020 14:00

Just my (now) DH and I at registry office in Scotland. Photographer and my hair/make-up lady were our witnesses. Told people when we got home a week after the event. Was perfect, wouldn't change a thing

PiggyPlumPie · 04/08/2020 14:04

Not quite an elopement as all family knew. We got married in Florida on holiday. Didn't want anyone there but us!

Cheap as chips and have no regrets 21 years on.

LunaNorth · 04/08/2020 14:05

We didn’t elope, as such, but we went to London and got married with just my sons and one of them’s gf as witnesses/guests.

I got my dress from ASOS, we got married at Marylebone Registry Office, DH picked my flowers up from a florist round the corner and handed them to me when I arrived, we had a Spotify playlist for our music, and afterwards we piled into a taxi, had a pint and some chips at Brewdog and dinner at The Ivy to celebrate.

It was a brilliant day.

SymphonieFantastique · 04/08/2020 14:09

www.oacphotography.com/ron-and-victoria

We eloped to a cottage in Pembrokeshire. We told our daughters that morning & got married in the living room. Our photographers were our witnesses.

One of the photographers secretly filmed the day for us & made it into this video. It is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done! Never regretted any of it.

twoshedsjackson · 04/08/2020 14:17

One of my friend's teachers didn't even have a day off work - she picked a morning when she had free periods. She took morning registration as normal, trotted off, tied the knot, and calmly announced to her form at the beginning of the afternoon that they should respond to their name with "Yes, Mrs XY" instead of "Yes, Miss AB", and they were henceforth Form IV XY. Presumably the other staff were aware of her plans in advance.
My late uncle could not face the big wedding his Mum had in mind, (think Hyacinth Bouquet) so he and his fiancee popped out of morning lectures with two friends from their art college, followed by a cup of tea and a bun in Lyons Corner House. The only problem arose when he eventually admitted this to his mother some months later, and had to alter the date on his marriage certificate before offering it as proof, having pretended to have been married the previous week, at his wife's insistence. (He had been avoiding the prospect of Mum going off on one out to the extent of going home at the weekend with his laundry, until his wife got irritated - after all, they were legally married!)
A long and happy marriage ensued.

LunaNorth · 04/08/2020 14:34

@SymphonieFantastique what a truly gorgeous wedding. You looked beautiful.

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